I’d rather have a novice who has a chance of supporting something good than an old hand using their experience to enact genocide.

I’m pretty well acquainted with the situation. I’d recommend this research on the subject that are mainly applicable to building transit, but I expect the same observations are generally true in other megaprojects: https://transitcosts.com/

From the executive summary:

In our New York case, we show examples of redundancy in blue-collar labor, as did others (Rosenthal 2017; Munfah and Nicholas 2020); we also found overstaffing of white-collar labor in New York and Boston (by 40-60% in Boston), due to general inefficiency as well as interagency conflict, while little of the difference (at most a quarter) comes from differences in pay.

Projects in the anglosphere are overstaffed for both design and construction, and there’s little evidence to show that there are better outcomes. Costs in Sweden are 20% those of the US, and yet you’d be hard-pressed to claim that Swedish workers are undercompensated or produce shoddy work.

As for “to spec”, the SF Central Subway, which opened 5 years after it was planned to and cost 3x as much as initially forecast, had delays because the contractor attempted to get away with using sub-standard steel. In order to save time and open sooner, the city kept some of the sub-standard rails in use in lower-traffic areas.

Spain and South Korea build high rail infrastructure for one tenth the cost of the US.

Do you think they are cutting corners in construction?

The cost of construction in the anglosphere doesn’t come from “too much safety”. It comes from a culture of consultants and managers and legalized graft.

Will anglo countries ever learn anything from other countries that can build things at reasonable prices? I’m guessing no.

Nauru is a state completely dependent on foreign aid. I imagine their loyalties are pretty predictably motivated.

Maybe China is giving them aid without requiring them to hold deported migrants.

the last time the US “declared war” was 1942

It 100% is, but that doesn’t change the fact that Americans are still conditioned to be constantly afraid of terrorism.

Do you really think the US has any real concern about being attacked?

Well I still have to take off my shoes at the airport so I’d say yes. This country hasn’t stopped being afraid of being attacked in 22 years.

They can and will invent their own reasons just fine tyvm.

I’ll ask an honest question here: What do you think Trump would be doing materially differently from Biden in the handling of this conflict? Israel has essentially been given carte blanche, weapons sales are continuing without congressional approval, and humanitarian aid to Gaza is severely restricted.

What could Trump be doing that’s worse than this? Sending in US troops to massacre Palestinians is about the only place you can go, and that doesn’t seem like him.

can you link me to that poll?

Because of limits on prescription drug price negotiations in the U.S., politicians south of the border have argued their health-care systems should simply buy more drugs from Canada.

A 2021 report by the Rand Corporation found that Canadian prices were just 46 per cent of those in the United States because Ottawa limits how much drugmakers can charge for medicines. The U.S. lets the free market dictate drug prices.

Literally. We could simply set our own identical price controls.

“We have decided to give them a medal!”

Like, I know that, because you’re a supporter of ethnostates you’re already arguing from such a bad faith position this almost isn’t worth it, but, even being the genius you are, certainly you would admit that the IDF would never allow Hamas to have actual established military bases even when not at war, right? You do get that? As soon as Hamas said “this is a military training facility” the Israelis would blow it up.

You’re acting like there’s some way for Hamas to carry out conventional warfare against a vastly more well-resourced occupying force.

and yet LDP will continue to govern forever it seems like

And yet the reporting on this protest is how I heard about the drilling leases.

Think globally. Act locally.

They’ll do the Japanese thing and allow slightly more Filipino nurses to immigrate to take care of all their geriatrics and nothing else.

Japan and South Korea are gonna ride their xenophobia until the wheels fall off.

A faction other than the right would have to form a government.

I did read the article. You tell me how they’re not the dog that caught the car. These reactionary Asian parents got what they wanted and now there will be fewer black kids admitted to top universities, but they’re still driving their own kids to ever higher suicide rates. Paying even more for private tutors. Demanding even more extracurriculars, even more cram schools. Asian-American parents are prisoners-dilemma-ing their children into misery with little to show for it because in their effort to dismantle one of the few policies that was working to reduce the systemic racial education gap in our society, they never once noticed that the systemic racism that also affects them is the same reason their kids still aren’t going to be CEOs or senators.

Well yeah, now they don’t have a scapegoat for if they fail.

The dog that caught the car.